Category: Sustainability

Natsai Audrey Chieza is a designer on a mission — to reduce pollution in the fashion industry while creating amazing new things to wear. In her lab, she noticed that the bacteria Streptomyces coelicolor makes a striking red-purple pigment, and now she’s using it to develop bold, color-fast fabric dye that cuts down on water waste and chemical runoff, compared with traditional dyes. And she isn’t alone in using synthetic biology to redefine our material future; think — “leather” made from mushrooms and superstrong yarn made from spider-silk protein. We’re not going to build the future with fossil fuels, Chieza says. We’re going to build it with biology.

As her class project, Veronika spent hours at a homeless shelter and with the help of their residents, developed a coat that also doubles as a sleeping bag at night and a shoulder bag when not in use. The Element S (survival), now called the EMPWR Coat, is self heated, and waterproof . The coat not only filled a need in the community, but became a way for Scott to improve the lives of others.

Ms. Scott stepped up and decided to do more than help the homeless stay warm in the cold Michigan winters, she began to hire people from local shelters and help them work their way out of homelessness. Her nonprofit organization, “The Empowerment Plan“, centers around lifting single parents out of homelessness by providing them with training and work making coats.

Over 34 families now have permanent housing thanks to a 20-something with a good idea, and a good heart. Together they have made over 15.000 EMPWR coats distributed across North America.

Good for you Veronika! Thanks for keeping us all warm for the holidays.

Amid a massive landfill in Cateura, Paraguay, children find hope by making music on instruments built from recycled trash. In a slum town where families survive by collecting and reselling garbage (and where a violin can cost more than a house), a visionary music teacher gathered a small team to plunder the landfill for materials and construct an ensemble of “recycled” instruments. In just a few years, their innovation has led to a thriving music school in Cateura and a youth orchestra that performs internationally. For members of the Recycled Orchestra, material poverty is not an obstacle to a life rich with music. They have each learned to value greatly how music impacts their lives, helping them express creativity, build self-confidence, and strengthen community.

The Musical Instrument Museum features the inspiring story and the innovative instruments of the Recycled Orchestra through a Latin America gallery exhibit and docent mini-tours. The Recycled Orchestra exhibit features eight recycled instruments from Paraguay as well as video and images of the youth orchestra and the environment of Cateura.

The scorching temperatures mean 2016 is all but certain to be the hottest year ever recorded, beating the previous hottest year in 2015, which itself beat 2014. This run of three record years is also unprecedented and, without climate change, would be a one in a million chance. Scaife says: “Including this year so far, 16 of the 17 warmest years on record have been since 2000 – it’s a shocking statistic.”

The right to survival prevails over property,” Italy’s highest court of appeals ruled this week when reviewing the case of a homeless man who had been given a six month jail sentence and a €100 euro fine for stealing cheese and sausages.

The man was caught before leaving the store and returned the goods, so the state prosecutor argued for the sentence to be reduced from “theft” to “attempted theft.”

But when the court of appeals heard the case, they radically upended the decision. This wasn’t worthy of punishment, they argued. In fact, taking food to stave off hunger should not even be considered a crime.

The judges wrote that the food had been taken “in the face of the immediate and essential need for nourishment.”

They also rebuked the entire process that brought this case before them–an attempt to take less than €5 of food went through 3 rounds of court hearings.

Italy, like large parts of the world, is coping with a recession. Each day, 615 people in Italy fall into poverty, according an op-ed in response to the ruling, many of whom struggle to find housing and food. Forgetting about these people is not an option, the piece argued.

Another op-ed argued that the ruling aligned with one of the most fundamental pillars of Western legal thinking–the concept of humanity that says a person’s dignity should be protected and that dignity rises when basic needs like food, water, housing and security are met.

On one level, this ruling attempts to return sense, discretion and an appreciation of context to criminal justice. Why, after all, was it necessary to spend so many resources to punish a man suffering from hunger, especially when this punishment will only deepen his poverty? Why not, instead, provide food for this person?

On another level, this ruling is a radical rethinking of human rights. Sure, it connects to ancient ideas of “humanity,” but these ideas have never fully been practiced on a large scale. The thought of a homeless person walking into a grocery store and just taking food without paying for it is, in a way, a radical affront to the market-based logic that rules most societies. If you want food, you pay for it just like everyone else, right?

But even still–in a world of abundance, should the vagaries of circumstance–job loss, illness, traumas–ever leave a person without the ability to get food?

When grocery stores around the world are stuffed with food, is it moral to allow someone to suffer from hunger?

These are challenging questions that strike at the core of many societal arrangements. But they’re questions that are worth asking, and finding some compromise for, in a time when inequality is rising and more people find themselves in economically distressed situations.

Globally, 795 million people do not have enough food to lead normal, healthy lives. Many more people struggle to buy and find food every day.

It’s unlikely that this ruling in Italy will lead to widespread theft from grocery stores and it’s cynical to suggest that a breakdown in the rule of law will follow (as some critics have suggested).

The more likely result will be an evaluation of what really matters in life and how much another person’s humanity should be respected.

In an ideal world, there would be consensus that a person’s dignity is the top priority in any situation and from there other rules based on other, secondary considerations would apply.

Thanks to Chaunda Fraulino and all of her hard work in making this happen every year. We have continually gotten better in this competition and I hope you all improve next year too.

Also thanks to all of you for doing your part and recycling, reducing, and reusing. This would not have been possible without an environmentally conscious student body and employees.

2016 RecycleMania Tournament

February 7 – April 2, 2016

Final Results

Glendale Community College (GCC) competed with 276 colleges and universities nationwide in the 2016 RecycleMania tournament from February 7 – April 2. The four Arizona participants included Arizona State University, Glendale Community College, and the University of Arizona. GCC reduced the amount of waste per person from 8.63 lbs. in 2015 to 7.61 lbs. in 2016 earning a 3rd place finish in the 2016 Waste Minimization competition.

The goal of waste minimization is to reduce overall waste (trash plus recyclables) through waste reduction activities such as the Zero Waste Program. As a direct result of our success in waste minimization, our placement in other categories is higher. The final results in all categories are listed below.

2016 RecycleMania Final Results

Grand Champion
103 out of 207Per Capita Classic
249 out of 269Gorilla
222 out of 276

Waste Minimization
3 out of 114

Corrugated Cardboard
93 out of 97

Our cumulative GHG (Greenhouse Gas) Reductions during the competition are 58 Metric Tons of CO2 Equivalent, or 11 cars off the road, or the energy consumption of 5 households.

About RecycleMania

This is GCC’s 6th year participating in the RecycleMania tournament. The tournament ran from February 7 – April 2, 2016. RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. Over an 8-week period, schools report recycling and trash data which are then ranked according to who collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or has the highest recycling rate overall.

There no better day than Earth Day to take a 15-20 minute break and enjoy the 1-Mile Sustainability Walk (see attached map). This is a great opportunity to see our beautiful campus and learn about sustainability initiatives.

This event celebrates our ninth annual dumpster dive, with a presentation of this years dumpster dive results, followed by our guest speaker, Thomas Williams, Chief Sustainability Officer, Maricopa County Community College District.